dwazouPaul McCartney and Dua Lipa among artists urging British Prime Minister Starmer to rethink his AI copyright plans
Thought experiment: What if AI companies were allowed to use copyrighted material for free as long as they release their models to the public? Want to keep your model private? Pay up. Similar to the GPL.
Fun fact: Copyright is also the basis on which you enforce copyleft provisions such as the those in GPL. In a world without copyright, there are no software licenses yet alone copyleft.
I know it’s very challenging for “this community” (FOSS users & developers let’s say) because a significant number of them also support shadow libraries such as Sci-Hub and Library Genesis and Anna’s Archive so how do we reconcile “copyleft (therefore copyright) good” with “copyright bad”?
I don’t have a clear answer yet but maybe the difference is as simple as violating copyright for personal purposes vs business purposes? Anyway…
The GPL uses copyright because it’s the legal mechanism available to enforce the principles that the GPL wants to enforce. It’s entirely consistent to believe that copyright shouldn’t exist while also believing that a law should exist to allow/enforce the principles of the GPL.
That’s fair! Though I find it (new laws that enforce the principles of copyleft) pretty unlikely so I’d much prefer a world with copyright + copyleft (GPL) than a world without either where mega corporations can exploit the commons without being obliged to share back.
It’s literally called copyright because it’s about the rights to copy something. The new law would still be a form of copyright.